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Resource Sharing
Resource sharing is at the heart of FEC communities. The first two FEC principles are: * Holds its land, labor, income and other resources in common. * Assumes responsibility for the needs of its members, receiving the products of their labor and distributing these and all other goods equally, or according to need. The equitable sharing of resources, or, in other words, ensuring that all members of an FEC community have equal access to the community's resources, and that all members are getting their needs met, is a core practice of egalitarianism. What Are "Needs"? What qualifies as a need and what resources a community is obligated to provide can vary quite a bit. Even within basic human needs like food, clothing, and shelter, what a person needs is not objective. Each community must decide this for itself, and this is a common issue for community's to wrestle with. It's common for members to disagree about the quantity and/or quality of resources they need. This is highly related to labor and money. It's also common for members to disagree they want to be working in general, and how much time they want to spend earning money in particular. Managing Resource Sharing Systems Resource sharing, and in particular, the collective management of resource sharing systems that meet the needs of the community's members, depends on a couple key things. Resource sharing depends on there being enough of the shared resource and adequate management to meet everyone's needs. This depends on the labor of the members to manage those systems and sufficient money to purchase what's needed, either directly or by purchasing the tools, equipment, and/or materials necessary to produce the shared resource (those tools, equipment and/or equipment are also shared resources that are collectively managed). This relates directly to the labor system and finances of the community. These need to be functioning well in order to support effective resource sharing. Like with labor systems and finances, how resource sharing systems are created, designed, and managed can look lots of different ways, from the highly informal to the rigorously bureaucratic. Each community does it a little differently. It's up to each community to figure out what will work best for them. Personal Belongings and Activities Resource sharing in FEC communities does not mean that there is no personal property. This is similar to income-sharing. FEC communities mostly allow for some degree of personal income, be it from jobs, gifts, etc. and for that income to be spend on certain kinds of things, and each community needs to decide where the line is. Communities assume that people will have some amount personal belongings. But owning personal belongings acquired through means that other members don't have access to, and using or displaying those belongings in public spaces in the community, is usually avoided, discouraged, or actively prohibited by policy. However, even in the case of prohibitions based on policy there are always exceptions. Clothing is one. People generally don't begrudge the sweater or socks you got for Christmas. Personal electronic devices are another, though some communities do have norms or policies on their use in public spaces. In some cases a community may provide money to purchase items that are then kept as a personal belonging, if it's in the community's interest and the community has decided it makes more sense to allow individuals to manage a certain thing themselves (e.g. tools or work clothing like gloves), as long as anyone who needs one is able to get it. Similarly, the personal income a community allows it's members to earn and spend for themselves may extend to activities like vacations or pursuits outside the community. Some communities minimize this and try to have enough money available that people are able to do what they want within the income and resource sharing of the community, whereas others give broad leeway to earn or receive money to be spent on vacations or activities. Meeting Individual Needs Often the needs of the members of a community are not uniform and the community has to figure out to what extent it wants to accommodate those different needs. Dietary preferences are a prime example; what food options does the community want to provide, and how much leeway does the community want to give people to access personal money to be able to buy food outside of what the community provides? A different example of this are obligations to a person's family outside of the community, e.g. aging parents. The community has to decide how much it is able and willing to support the time and money a member may need in order to take care of an ill or dying relative. "Tragedy of the Commons" It's common for community's to struggle with taking good care of it's collective resources. Whatever the cause of this, it's a common and frustrating experience to find things broken, dirty, out of place, or otherwise inconvenient or unavailable for use when you need it. Some amount of this is probably inevitable, and different individuals as well as communities as a whole have different levels of tolerance of this. Again, each community needs to figure out for themselves their communication and management cultures and the extent to which they want to ensure proper care and availability of shared resources.